1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for recognizing the location of a vehicle and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for recognizing the location of a vehicle, which are capable of recognizing landmarks, previously indicated around a road, using the image camera and range sensor of the vehicle, and guiding the vehicle in an unmanned manner based on the recognized landmarks.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a vehicle controller for unmanned autonomous driving must know the path to a destination and perform control so that the path can be followed. In order to follow the path, the throttling and steering of the vehicle can be controlled when the current location of the vehicle and the angle of the vehicle for steering control, that is, the heading, are precisely known. In addition, brakes and a gear transmission must be controlled in order to temporarily stop and then restart the vehicle so as to deal with the appearance of an obstacle.
As described above, unmanned autonomous driving is performed by generating control commands capable of controlling a plurality of electronic devices included in a vehicle, using information about the current location and heading of the vehicle and obstacles as input.
However, the information about the current location and heading of the vehicle required for unmanned autonomous driving can be obtained using a Global Positioning System (GPS)/Real Time Kinematic (RTK), which are expensive equipment. Accordingly, a problem arises in that it is difficult to commercialize the unmanned autonomous driving service because information about the current location and heading of a vehicle must be obtained by using the expensive equipment as described above.
As a result, there is a need for a technology for providing an unmanned autonomous driving service without requiring expensive equipment.